I have to admit I have a bit of a soft spot for unglamorous, grumpy old politicians like Brown who don’t seem to give much of a fig for PR.

His famously bad temper and so-called ‘clunking fist’ were plus points for me.

As were the facts he was totally unphotogenic, completely PR-unfriendly and hated by just about all of the mainstream press in the UK.

And no – he didn’t cause the global recession and financial crisis.

The clue’s in the word ‘global’.

In fact, in my opinion we could do with a LOT more bad-tempered clunking fists like Brown in parliament instead of all the countless clean-cut, insincere, well-manicured, PR friendly, bland Blair clones that seem to dominate British politics today.

He did however make his share of mistakes, regardless of whatever else was going on in the world at the time.

Examples include selling the gold reserves when they were at their cheapest levels and doing little either as chancellor or PM to reign in the banks before the crash (whether it was global or not, the size of the banking sector here meant that any action he could have taken could have potentially made a real difference to the severity of the crisis IMO)

That said, I seem to recall him writing a personal letter of condolence to the family of a dead soldier during his time as PM, only to be castigated for spelling the name wrongly. A quick google gives me this:

Sod the fact that he’s dyslexic and as PM he wouldn’t normally be expected to do this anyway – apparently the idea that he was simply trying to do the right thing in that instance and take time to do this was completely ignored.

No good deed goes unpunished. I do get the impression sometimes that politics consists of little more than ‘you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t’…

I definitely agree Brown’s biggest mistake was not reining in the banks. Mind you, the only people saying that should be done at the time (ie before the recession) were supposedly out-of-touch, old-fashioned lefties.
But how right they were.

Thanks for stopping by! I know, you’re not alone in that thinking…though….would the outcome have been any different if a different PM was in power at that time? I believe that the vote had cross party support to go into Iraq? There is, therefore, blood on the entire parliamentary set of hands. All parties. Though, I think Cook and Short (Labour) voted against. I can’t think of any Tories or Lib Dems off the top of my head. Sadly – there is more to come, it seems. Blair might have been recent histories biggest monster, but I don’t see that any lessons have been learned.

I certainly admire Gordon Brown for the way he’s coped throughout his life with the terrible life-changing injuries he suffered at an early age. He also deserves praise for some actions including the introduction of the Sure Start initiative.

However my heart hardens against him when I recall that he was responsible for forcing through the disastrous and money-bleeding London Underground Public Private Partnership (PPP). As an ex-Tube employee I can never forgive him for what must have been sheer pigheadedness, since with his acute intelligence he surely understood the validity of the arguments ranged against him. The whole sorry shambles is terribly complicated and difficult to follow but Anthony King gives an admirable step-by-step analysis in a chapter of his book The Blunders of our Governments.

It’s SOOOOO nice that you admire Brown for coping with his ‘rugger’ injury. I wonder if you have equal sympathy for the massively worse life-changing injuries inflicted on countless innocent children in Iraq and Afghanistan by the wars which Brown started…… and the poverty in which they now have to try to cope?

Yes, now you mention it, I do,and of course acknowledge that GB fully benefited from the NHS at its finest, while many of those injured in recent wars receive barely adequate treatment. However I don’t think GB was solely responsible for starting those wars.

Yes, he must certainly take some responsibility, whether he actually shared Blair’s crazed mindset or simply went along with it so he wouldn’t have to consider resigning. Actually I don’t ‘admire’ him as much as I might have implied – I was just trying too hard to be ‘balanced’.

I hope you gave some consideration to my main point. Of course we’re lucky not to live in a country that’s completely devastated by war, but don’t you feel some frustration that our politicians sometimes waste huge amounts of our tax revenues on misguided schemes for dubious reasons? In the case of the PPP, a pathological loathing of Ken Livingstone must have been a major factor.

Me too. He made the only proper tub thumping speeches on the Together side. Goodness knows why the other unionists were so boring and negative – Salmond was totally lazy and lost because he hasn’t done his preparations on currency etc so the Yes side just never came up with answers. I could have gone Yes but the ridiculous uncertainty of “vote yes and err…it will be ok promise” just was too shaky.

I think that the raid on pension fund assets was his biggest blunder. That contributed to the decline of occupational pensions which will lead to state pensions becoming ever more unaffordable.
However it is good to see someone besides myself who understands that Gordon Brown’s borrowing was a response to a Global crisis which was entirely correct and appropriate, and not, as most Conservative voters appear to think (and constantly say) the cause of the recession.

45% voted YES. 55% voted for the promise of more powers via Gordon Brown. The UK is still in a mess. Democracy is a joke. We witnessed the leaders of the 3 main UK parties singing from the same hymn sheet. Interesting times ahead.

“Alex Salmond says when he asked David Cameron about the timetable for more powers, the Prime Minister said it was a meaningless process.” tweeted by bbc’s james cook .. they certainly moved fast on their promised VOW..

Not just Tony Blair, a large majority of the UK public was in favour of military intervention to get rid of Saddam. Hard to find anyone now who’ll admit to that of course, and those such as myself who were against had to complete the awkward sentence “I think Saddam Hussein should still be left in power in Iraq because …” – and that’s still the case. In fact all parties: Labour, Conservative and LibDem were in favour of military intervention, so were most voters and most of the the press. But we forget, those on the left, knowing after the event how it all turned out, are shaking their heads saying ‘Not me chief – it was him over there.’ and pretend Blair lead an unwilling country, party and populace to war. He didn’t.
Equally, as our host says, Brown didn’t create the global banking crisis and he was the first world leader to identify what had to be done to fix it. Again though we get an almost non-stop narrative talking him down and rewriting history – and again it works.

Stop theWar Coalition got quite a few people together to protest against it … anybody who’s seen ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ could have told you that ‘boots on the ground’ was always going to be a bad idea in Afghan but the invasion of Iraq was clearly a criminal act justified by lies and fear mongering. But yeah most of the Labour lot fell for it.

Finkfurst – from your link: “Support for British involvement in a war if there were a UN resolution and the weapons inspectors found proof of Iraq hiding weapons has not significantly changed – three-quarters would in favour (74%, compared to 75% two weeks ago), and one in six (17%, compared to 18%) opposed.”

People were overwhelmingly in favour of war with Iraq to get rid of Saddam. And we all (including Blair) believed he had WMD (in fact IS have just recently got their hands on nuclear material he left behind). The debates were about the UN resolution – not about whether war itself was right or wrong. Libdems to their credit refused to back war without a second resolution and held consistently to that. Both Labour and Conservatives were mainly in favour of backing US intervention, and remember UK refusing to do that would have had no affect on the outcome, the US was going in anyway. But – as above – the vast majority accepted going to war was the right thing to do to get rid of Saddam. (As I said, I was agin, like you and know I was in a minority and I didn’t have an alternative way of removing Saddam. So I wasn’t comfortable with that.)

If you carefully read through Gordon Brown’s speech you will find nothing but platitudes. Yes he attacked the SNP but for those people I listened to that talked on the streets, they were not voting for the SNP they were voting for self determination.

As we see today those promises glibly made before the vote are already unraveling, with Gordon Brown promising they he will make sure that they are kept.

I really have to ask myself why can’t people see this just hot air and posturing, Gordon Brown is a charlatan, he can’t promise anything, he doesn’t have the power to do anything.

Before people get dewy eyed about this forthright speaker, just remember that the NHS had already been privatised whilst he was in government, they introduced the internal market into the NHS. they also are continuing to do so with the “preferred provider.” so look carefully at what he says, which in real terms is nothing other than how good it feels to be a Scot meaningless platitudes, and omits to say what their real intentions are.

This is something that he doesn’t say in public but speaks volumes about his involvement in the world wide crash:

“I am grateful to many of you here tonight, including the Lord Mayor, who has agreed to serve on the new City advisory group.

Ed Balls, our new City Minister, will work with you to develop publish and then promote a long term strategy for the development of London’s financial services and promoting our unique advantages and assets. We will set a clear ambition to make Britain the location of choice for headquarters and services, including R&D, for even more of the world’s leading companies.

And just as two years ago we promoted the action plan for liberalising financial services across Europe, I can tell you that the Treasury is now working with Charles McCreevy and with you to ensure that the forthcoming European financial services white paper signals a new wave of liberalisation.”

Presumably you only had one then? He deregulated the banks and failed to heed warnings about them, sold off our gold reserves and told us that “boom and bust” was over. How clever was that? He spent most of his time plotting against Blair rather and insulting voters than running the country. Now he is making promises that he has no ability to carry through and it’s already falling apart. It’s unlikely he made much a difference to the result but if I had voted no on the basis of his intervention, I would feel a bit let down! Dr Evil has risen!

Personally I believe Gordon Brown did the best he could in the circumstances – a deluded Blairite tendency Labour party following neo-liberal policies – his only alternative would have been to resign which would have meant he wouldn’t have been able to lessen the effect of their stupidity which he undoubtedly did.

Gordon Brown went with a posse of delegates to study the American welfare system and still came back and implemented ‘new deal’ when ‘new labour’ were elected. swine!
We are still living under the auspices of these policies under ids.

Gordon brown delivered a good speech but when he was prime minister did nothing for Scotland

it seems that the public will never learn the lessons that talk is cheap and means nothing in the uk

The Scottish people were indeed conned and there is no way David Cameron will give them what they won’t

He will only give them as little as possible to get reselected back as prime minister and then scale back on what he has given them

Salmond had not put the case for Scotland’s independence in a professional manner with regards key areas like would they keep the pound /costs etc

salmonds overall speech was good thou but without the through research beforehand he was found wonting hence that’s why he lost

He had two years to be word perfect beforehand so i myself am at a loss at some of the questions asked of him in whom his reply was unsatisfactory he should have nailed it but as I say, failed to do so

He had no option but to resign, as he knows himself that he could and should have done better

Gordon browns speech was just that a good speech a speech that anyone passionate about a subject would make

Oh well let’s hope that the next speech for their independence in ten years’ time fairs better